


This Kind of Thing Can Happen

by novelogical (writingmonsters)



Category: The Alienist (TV)
Genre: Dancing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 06:34:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20286985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingmonsters/pseuds/novelogical
Summary: John had always thought it a terrible shame. Graceful, handsome Laszlo with his regal bearing and the fierce light in his eyes would make a beautiful dancer. Holding Laszlo now, he adjusts and accommodates to suit Laszlo’s disability with ease. The position is far from a proper dancer’s hold, but it doesn’t matter -- it is only the two of them, only a turn around the parlor.Only a small measure of comfort offered.





	This Kind of Thing Can Happen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misanthropiclycanthrope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misanthropiclycanthrope/gifts).

> For Jake - I hope this makes you smile <3  
Thank you for always being an inspiration.

_Shall we dance? On a bright cloud of music, shall we fly?_

* * *

It’s the unhappy plucking of piano keys -- clumsy and weighed down by melancholy -- that drawn John into the parlor. Discordant, unhappy sounds that try to fumble themselves into a melody and fall short.

_ The young Master Kreizler… _

A prodigy.

At first it had been only one more obligation; another corner of his small and privileged life where the hint of imperfection could tempt scorn and ire in equal measure. But something had unlocked in him -- Beethoven’s  _ Sonata Pathétique _ thrumming through the sinews of his hands -- and he had discovered the emotion he could shape between the notes. Confusion. Heartache. Rare and brilliant joy. All the overwhelming tangles of emotion knotted up in his core that he hadn’t before known how to unwind.

“I’d hoped --” The confession had struggled on his lips, a rare glimpse Laszlo had allowed into the then-limitless dreams of a small boy. “That is, before I opened myself to an examination of the human mind in its extremes, I entertained the notion that I might enjoy a career as a concert pianist. I thought I would compose.”

Now, there is not enough muscle in his wasted arm to hold his fingers poised above the ivory keys. Manipulating his fingers to touch the keys only brings sharp sparks of pain.

The music is gone.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. And in this moment it seems it is the only thing that matters. He grieves with shining eyes and a sharp hitch in his breath. Anything good in his life, any small glimmer of happiness -- it has always been snuffed out. Stolen.

Laszlo draws the gleaming maple cover down over the piano keys and steps away. Just a moment to recover himself, passing a trembling hand across his face, before he heads for the exquisite little phonograph tucked away in the corner. An ingenious device. A meager surrogate. And, only suddenly aware of his audience, he turns to catch John lingering in the doorway and offers him a fond, guilty look that is more grimace than smile.

“What was it?”

John decides it is invitation enough, joining Laszlo in the parlor with a nod toward the silent piano. He knows better than to ask outright what it is that weighs on Laszlo’s mind, whether he is all right.

“Hm?”

“That piece.” John grips the wooden frame of the settee and waits. “What was it?”

Rifling through the cabinet of wax cylinders, Laszlo gives a dismissive shrug, his shoulders awkwardly hunched. “Only noise.”

Once, it might have been Brahms. The Piano Quartet No. 3, performed in C minor. It might have been a release, loosening the melancholy from his tired and heavy heart.

Tonight, it is only clumsy fingers too heavy on the keys.

Laszlo sets the cylinder on its rod, secures the stylus with a practiced hand, and the  _ three waltzes _ of Chopin’s 34th opus shiver and expand to fill the room with a tinny swell of notes. He closes his eyes, savoring the forlorn weight of every note. The sound rises up to envelop him -- folding him into strong arms, a steady heart beating against his back.

John.

“And this?” John traces the curve of his skull with kisses, buries his nose in the sharp scent of pomade and the hint of a curl behind Laszlo’s ear. 

This, Laszlo thinks, letting himself lean into the support as John sways them slowly side-to-side. This, is the one true happiness he has managed to hold on to.

“ _ Vals en La Menor _ ” he tells John softly, turning in his arms. Pensive music, it matches the trace of a frown still lingering between his straight brows. “A minor -- it is Chopin.” 

And John has no musical inclinations to speak of, but as he listens he recognizes the familiar rise and fall of the rhythm. The one-two-three undercurrent that has carried him around countless ballrooms with a companion in his arms.

Almost unthinking, John traces his hands along the curve of Laszlo’s spine, the span of his shoulders. He guides the warmth of the strong left hand to rest over his lapel -- over the beating of his heart -- slips his own arm around to settle at Laszlo’s waist and keep him close.

“ _ John _ .”

A warning.

Laszlo is like glass in John’s embrace, hard-edged and frighteningly easy to shatter. John sees the uncertainty clear in his umber eyes -- hears the hitch in his breath -- when captures the sharp knob of Laszlo’s right elbow in the cradle of his palm. 

“Shh,” John soothes. “Trust me.”

Laszlo does.

It is a hard-won trust, but he has given John his heart, will give him his life -- his soul, if such a thing exists. Only, he has never learned. And he is ashamed. A proper waltz hold, with arms held high and spines erect, draws too much attention to the frail right arm he cannot lift without waking bolts of bone-deep pain.

John had always thought it a terrible shame. Graceful, handsome Laszlo with his regal bearing and the fierce light in his eyes would make a beautiful dancer. Holding Laszlo now, he adjusts and accommodates to suit Laszlo’s disability with ease. The position is far from a proper dancer’s hold, but it doesn’t matter -- it is only the two of them, only a turn around the parlor. 

Only a small measure of comfort offered.

“Your left foot first,” John reminds him as he settles his shoulders, measures the count. “I’ll do my best not to tread on your toes.”

“I’m not sure --”

“One.”

John steps forward.

Wary, Laszlo stumbles over his backwards step -- follows John swiftly along the “two-three-and--” that carries them through a sidestep, a rise to the balls of their feet. John counts him through the movement again, an L-shape transcribed upon he rug, and he is certain that Laszlo doesn’t breathe once.

“That’s it,” John beams, guiding Laszlo in the slow triple steps back and forth at half-speed. And Laszlo is sure that his slow, awkward steps could not possibly be deserving of such a smile. 

“I feel foolish.” 

“Sometimes you  _ are _ foolish.” John risks teasing, trying to ease some of the apprehension clouding Laszlo’s brow. “But not right now -- you’re beautiful.” He is rewarded by a soft flush of pleasure, coaxing Laszlo through a hesitating box-step. 

And somewhere in the middle of the movement, Laszlo no longer has to measure it out in his head, hears the steps in the music when John ceases to count the beats under his breath. Each circuit becomes smoother, less a carefully executed sequence and more a gentle flow of bodies, John’s hand firm and intimate in the dip of his waist as they abandon their square of the floorboards to waltz between the armchairs, stepping lightly around the settee.

Impossible, that this is the same series of footsteps that Laszlo has watched countless times from the edges of glittering ballrooms -- men and women in polite embraces, friends and strangers and potential suitors seeming to float across the floor in swirls of silk and taffeta and dark tuxedo jackets. 

It is too intimate, something more than dancing, to be led by John -- to feel as though he is flying, tracing each progression of notes with his entire self in endless circles through the parlor space. And somewhere in the midst of it he finds the dark shadow of his mood not quite vanished, but diminishing, the cloying weight of it easing from around his shoulders.

His heavy head finds its way to John’s shoulder and Chopin falls silent, the final notes lingering like ghosts. “Don’t stop.”

John waltzes him through the memory of the music, tucking Laszlo closer into the circle of his arms. His lips brush the warm skin of the alienist’s temple, a proud head burdened with too much trouble and too many questions. “Talk to me?”

Laszlo does.

He makes his confessions softly, feels the vibrato of John’s replies rumbling beneath the weight of Laszlo’s skull as they continue to sway. And he thinks of Nietzsche --  _ those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. _

“You always know.” It is a quiet, bemused thought that escapes him when their steps have slowed, when his heart is lighter and John’s hand on his waist has slipped a little lower. “How is it you always know?”

He does not have to see it to feel the way John smiles. “Because I love you.”

Perhaps it is a  _ folie à deux _ of sorts, the softest of delusions -- melody meeting harmony, the two of them sharing in music only they can hear. And perhaps it is only love.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from The King & I's "Shall We Dance?"  
Hopefully, I've put my semester's worth of ballroom dance lessons to good use.


End file.
